September
24, 2005
This year’s convention theme is “Preserving the Past to Protect the
Future.” Many of the delegates in
this room are not aware of the plight of labor over the years and how far we
have come. Let me share a little bit of
the past with you and the struggles of those who came before us.
The date, April 20, 1914, will forever be a day of infamy
for American workers. On that day, 20 innocent men, women and children were
killed in the Ludlow Massacre. The coal miners in
Upon striking, the miners and their families had been
evicted from their company-owned houses and had set up a tent colony on public
property. The massacre occurred in a carefully planned attack on the tent
colony by
Not one of the perpetrators of the slaughter were ever
punished, but scores of miners and their leaders were arrested and black-balled
from the coal industry.
Bisbee
Deportation of 1917
The mining
companies controlled Bisbee, not only because they were the primary employers
but because local businesses depended heavily on the mines and miners to
survive. Even the local newspaper was owned by one of the major mining companies,
Phelps Dodge.
On June 24, 1917,
the I.W.W. (Industrial Workers of the World) presented the Bisbee mining
companies with a list of demands. These demands included improvements to safety
and working conditions, such as requiring two men on each machine and an end to
blasting in the mines during shifts. Demands were also made to end
discrimination against members of labor organizations and the unequal treatment
of foreign and minority workers. Furthermore, the unions wanted a flat wage
system to replace sliding scales tied to the market price of copper. The copper
companies refused all I.W.W. demands, using the war effort as justification. As
a result, a strike was called, and by June 27, roughly half of the Bisbee work
force was on strike.
On July 11, secret
meetings of two so-called “vigilante groups” were held to discuss ways to deal
with the strike and the strikers. The
next day, July 12, 1917, starting at 2:00 a. m., calls were made to Loyalty
Leaguers as far away as Douglas, Arizona. By 5:00 a. m., about 2,000 deputies
assembled. All wore white armbands to distinguish them from other mining
workers. No federal or state officials were notified of the vigilantes' plans.
The Western Union telegraph office was seized, preventing any communication to the
town.
At 6:30 a.
m., Sheriff Harry Wheeler gave orders to begin the roundup. Throughout Bisbee,
men were roused from their beds, their houses, and the streets. Though armed,
the vigilantes were instructed to avoid violence. However, reports of beatings,
robberies, vandalism, and abuse of women later surfaced. The vigilantes rounded up over 1,000 men,
many of whom were not strikers -- or even miners -- and marched them two miles
to the Warren Ballpark. There they were surrounded by armed Loyalty Leaguers
and urged to quit the strike. Anyone willing to put on a white armband was
released. At 11:00 a. m. a train arrived, and 1,186 men were loaded aboard
boxcars inches deep in manure. Also boarding were 186 armed guards; a machine
gun was mounted on the top of the train. The train traveled from Bisbee to Columbus,
New Mexico, where it was turned back because there were no accommodations for
so many men. On its return trip the train stopped at Hermanas, New Mexico,
where the men were abandoned. A later train brought water and food rations, but
the men were left without shelter until July 14th when U. S. troops arrived.
The troops escorted the men to facilities in Columbus. Many were detained for
several months.
Several
months after the deportation, President Woodrow Wilson set up the Federal
Mediation Commission to investigate the Bisbee Deportation. The Commission
discovered that no federal law applied. It referred the issue to the State of
Arizona while recommending that such events be made criminal by federal
statute. They did hold that the copper companies were at fault in the
deportation, not the I.W.W. The State of
Arizona took no action against the copper companies. Approximately 300
deportees brought civil suits against the El Paso and Southwestern Railroad and
the copper companies. None of these suits came to trial because of out-of-court
settlements. Suits were also filed in state court against 224 vigilantes.
Sadly, the only suit brought to trial ended in a "not guilty"
verdict. The rest of the cases were dismissed.
Although
efforts to organize pro-labor unions in Bisbee were crushed in 1917, the
Deportation boosted I.W.W. efforts across the country. The Bisbee Deportation
of 1917 was not only a pivotal event in Arizona's labor history, but one that
had an effect on labor activities throughout the country.
Mother Jones
Mary Harris “Mother” Jones, born in Cork, Ireland, on May 1, 1830, came from a long line of agitators. When she was a child, she watched British soldiers march through the streets, the heads of Irishmen stuck on their bayonets. Her father's father, an Irish freedom fighter, was hanged; her father was forced to flee to America with his family in 1835.
She grew up in Toronto, Ontario, where she attended the public schools and seemed to be, according to all accounts, ambitious and adventuresome. In 1861, she met and married George E. Jones, an ironmolder who was "a staunch member" of the Iron Molders' Union.
Life was
relatively good for Mary Harris Jones until 1867. That year, when she was 37
years old, within one week her husband and their four small children died in a
yellow fever epidemic. After the epidemic had run its course, she returned to
Chicago where, once again, she began to work as a dressmaker. She said one day,
"Pray
for the dead, and fight like hell for the living." She lived those words, even when the dead
were her own family.
But tragedy followed Mother Jones. Four years later, in 1871, she lost everything she owned in the great Chicago fire. That event also changed her life drastically, and she discovered a new path to follow. She became involved in the labor movement and began to attend meetings of the newly formed Knights of Labor " in an old, tumbled down, fire scorched building."
When there was a strike, Mother Jones organized and helped the workers; at other times, she held educational meetings. In 1877, she helped in the Pittsburgh railway strike; during the 1880s she organized and ran educational meetings; in 1898 she helped found the Social Democratic Party; and in 1905 she was present at the founding of the Industrial Workers of the World.
After 1890 she became involved in the struggles of coal miners and became an organizer for the United Mine Workers, attending her first UMWA convention on January 25, 1901.
She came to national attention in 1912-13, during the Paint Creek-Cabin Creek strike in West Virginia, because of the publicity resulting from frequent violence. Mother Jones remembered the lessons learned from her late husband, and she often involved the wives and children of miners to dramatize a situation. On September 21, 1912, she led a march of miners' children through the streets of Charleston, West Virginia; on February 12, 1913, she led a protest about conditions in the strike area and was arrested.
She was convicted by a military court of conspiring to commit murder and was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Her trial, conviction, and imprisonment created such a furor that the U.S. Senate ordered a committee to investigate conditions in the West Virginia coalfields. However, on May 8, 1913, before the investigation got underway, newly elected governor Hatfield set Mother Jones free. She was 83 years old. Later in 1913 Mother Jones traveled to Colorado to participate in the yearlong strike by miners there. She was evicted from mine company property several times, but returned each time. She was arrested and imprisoned twice.
Mary Harris Jones died in Silver Spring on November 30,
1930, seven months after her one-hundredth birthday. She was buried in the
Union Miners Cemetery at Mount Olive, Illinois, in the coalfields of southern
Illinois. Her grave is near those of the victims of the Virden, Illinois, mine
riot of 1898.
At
the core of her beliefs was the idea that justice for working people depended on
strong families, and strong families required decent working conditions.
To
workers, she would become an anchor to the past and an arrow toward a better
future.
Today and
into the Future
With the current anti-worker, anti-union administration in
Washington, DC, our ability to exist as unions is under attack-ergonomic
standards (10 years worth of work), Family Medical Leave Act (cutting amount of
time employees can take off), Fair Labor Standards Act (overtime over 40
hours), National Labor Relations Act (pro-company board seats appointed by the
President), and our 401Ks and pension plans wiped out by corporate crooks.
We have seen in recent months the actions of some unions to
disaffiliate with the AFL-CIO. It’s much
easier to desert the ship, rather than stay in and fight for what you believe
is right. Although many of us believe
this was a wreckless and irresponsible act on the part of those national union
leaders, many of us have built close friendships with many of those union
members and we will continue to extend the hand of solidarity to build a
stronger labor force in Arizona, New Mexico and across the nation.
Being involved in this local is not just about Qwest, as
many of our members think or it’s not just representation in the grievance
process. It’s about the labor movement
as a whole. It’s being involved in
electing the right people to political office, be it at the city, state or
national level that supports working family issues. It’s about organizing the unorganized so they
have a voice at work. Organizing is the
answer to the survival of the labor movement.
It’s about being involved in community services, such as raising money
for our charity of choice-The Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation or
supporting Labor’s Community Service Agency.
It’s our CWA Triangle.
Prior to the CWA National Convention, I just attended in
Chicago, I had been chewed up and spit out by some members who worked for Qwest
that didn’t like the new tentative agreement for one reason or another. But by the end of the convention, I walked
away with the realization of what is really important in life. Hurricane Katrina had just hit the gulf coast
and many of the delegates there had no home to return to, no way to get home
because the airports were closed and some not knowing if their family and
friends were alive, just missing or dead.
The delegates passed a motion to take $4 million dollars from the
Members Relief Fund to assist the nearly 20,000 CWA members that have been
affected by the hurricane. Several
delegates from the ravaged region got up, through tears, and thanked us for the
outpouring of support from their CWA brothers and sisters. This is what the union’s about-no matter how
bad we think things are, we support each other-through the good and the
bad. Companies come and go and merge and
split, but the one thing that is constant is the union.
CWA is over 650,000 strong and although our challenges are
great, together there is nothing we cannot do.
At this convention you will have a resolution before you that is called CWA,
Ready for the Future. This resolution is going to change the face
of CWA, with your input and the input of our members. Next year at the national convention in Las
Vegas the future of CWA will be decided, based on that input. It’s hard work to build a strong union,
but knowing you can count on each other is the key to our success.
In Closing
I have been involved, starting as a steward with this local,
for over 32 years and am still proud to be a member and most importantly,
thankful for my union. Many of our
members don’t realize what we do as union reps-time away from our families
because of late night meetings, working weekends, traveling out of town more
than we may care to and the dissatisfied member who’s yelling and screaming at
you for a decision you may have had no control over. Giving up overtime, because our union time
isn’t considered time worked. Then, as a
full time officer, your matching 401K is effected. Being involved in the union is about
dedication, commitment and a strong willingness to fight for what is right for
working families.
My husband, Mike and our children, Todd and Jamie are the
ones who sacrificed the most. When the
kids were little, many nights I wasn’t home to help them with their homework or
to cook dinner. It fell to Mike to get
them ready for bed and many times they were already in bed when I got home, so
I could only go in and quietly kiss them good night and tell them how much I
loved them. But there were also many
experiences they will never forget-walking picket lines and knowing why we were
there; knowing that at the holidays you got to go to the union hall to see
Santa and knowing why you should buy union and not shop at WalMart. I could not have done this work for over
thirty-two years without the love and support of my family. Thank you.
I recently read a book that had a
lesson to be learned. Imagine life is a
game in which you are juggling five balls.
The balls are called work, family, health, friends and integrity. You’re keeping them all in the air, but one
day you finally come to understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. The other four balls-family, health, friends,
integrity-are made of glass. If you drop
one of these, it will be irrevocably scuffed, nicked, perhaps even
shattered. Once I truly understood the
lesson of the five balls, I knew for sure I wanted that balance in my life.
Many months ago, prior to reading the book, I made a decision. After many discussions with Mike and the rest
of my family, I decided it was time to move on.
I am not running for re-election.
I can walk away proud, knowing I gave everything I could to this great
union, but it has given much more to me. I take with me the four fragile
balls-family, health, friends and integrity, knowing that a new rubber ball is
just around the corner. I also will keep
close to my heart the many wonderful memories and close friendships that I have
gained. They will never be forgotten-you
are my second family.
I believe, as tough as it may seem, the
best days for CWA are yet to come. And
as Mother Jones was known to be, so shall you-become an anchor to the past and an
arrow toward a better future.
In
Solidarity,
Linda
Glass, President